The Death Cure by James Dashner

*Please note, there will be spoilers for the series in this review.*

The Death Cure is the final installment of the original Maze Runer series by James Dashner.  It picks up a few weeks after the conclusion of The Scorch Trials. After reaching the safe haven at the end of the Scorch, Thomas has been kept in isolation, locked inside of a padded room.  As the novel begins, the door opens and Thomas is greeted by A.D. Janson, a WICKED official who promises that the trials are all over for Thomas and he is about to explain everything that has been going on behind the scenes.  He says that the time has come for Thomas to work together with WICKED to finish their research and create the cure for the Flare.  Thomas, still suspicious of WICKED's motives, refuses to go along with the program.  Instead of getting his memories restored like most of his companions, he escapes the WICKED headquarters with Newt, Minho, Brenda, and Jorge and begins a quest to figure out what is going on on his own terms and to take WICKED down once and for all. 

I've noticed a pattern in young adult dystopian trilogies.  The authors of these novels build up a great mystery in their first few installments, and then fail to provide an ending that makes sense or is satisfying.  That's definitely the case here.  I'm glad that I read this series on my Kindle, because I enjoyed what I read well enough, but don't see myself reading it again.  It would be a waste of shelf space.  I didn't feel like this book was completely awful, but a couple of factors slightly soured the reading experience for me.

My primary disappointment with this one was in the explanation Dashner provides for the purpose of the Maze and the Scorch Trials.  Within the first few chapters, A.D. Janson tells Thomas this:

"Everything we've done up till now has been calculated for one purpose and one purpose only: to analyze your brain patterns and build a blueprint from them.  The goal is to use this blueprint to develop a cure for the Flare."

Um, what?  WICKED is asserting here that they need to see how a brain that is immune to the Flare handles emotions like fear and betrayal in order to find a cure for the disease.  That's a little too far away from how science works for me, even for a science fiction novel.  This revelation seemed so, well, nonsensical, that I was rolling my eyes throughout the rest of the novel.  It spoiled the suspension of disbelief I had established for the series.  It was a disappointing explanation for what was going on.

Thomas' insistence on remaining in the dark about WICKED's activities was also a letdown.  I have mentioned before that Dashner continually falls back on the lazy plot device of Thomas suddenly "remembering" things to move the action along.  When he is given the opportunity to recover his memories at the beginning of the novel, I was hopeful that this strategy would be abandoned.  No such luck, however.  Thomas refuses to have his memories restored, an odd decision for someone who is desperate to destroy WICKED.  Wouldn't all that inside knowledge from before he entered the Maze be helpful in taking the organization down?  Nope.  Thomas' point of view is this:

"I don't want to know anything.  Not one more thing.  All I care about is what we're going to do from here on out, not stuff about my past, or yours, or WICKED's.  Nothing."

 The stated explanation for this stance is that Thomas doesn't trust WICKED enough to let them do anything further to him.  The real reason for this stance is so that Dashner can keep using Thomas' recovered memories to move the plot.  This insistence on "remembering" as a plot device is a cheap way to tell a story and gets old very quickly.  I was disppointed to see it continue throughout the entire series as the primary way information is conveyed to readers.

Aside from these factors, there were a couple of weird disconnects that I had a hard time getting past.  One of these is the explosion of lethal violence that occurs in the last half of the book.  The Maze Runner series is no stranger to violence, of course, but before the last installment, the violence was generally fistfights and non-lethal clashes.  In the last part of this book however, Thomas and his friends are literally running down hallways killing people.  It was a rather abrupt shift. 

Another example is Thomas' age.  It is mentioned throughout the series that he used to work for WICKED, and not just as a rank-and-file employee.  He was someone important - someone who helped design the trials.  This comes into clearer focus when an older ex-doctor for WICKED snidely says to Thomas that he can't believe he used to work for him. How the heck did Thomas, a 16 year old kid, rise that high in the organization?  Was he that doctor's boss when he was 14?  We're consistently told that Thomas is smart - one of the best and the brightest among the Immunes, but nothing he does in the series ever seems that particularly intelligent (quite the contrary, actually), so I don't understand how he used to be so important to WICKED.  I thought for sure this point would be clarified by the end of the series, but since Thomas never gets his full memories back, we never find out the circumstances of his employment.

The Death Cure's disappointing explanation for the trials and continued poor storytelling makes it the weakest novel in the trilogy.  Despite its flaws, however, it's still an okay ending to the series.  It even has a little twist in the epilogue that adds a bit of complexity for the reader to think about after the story ends.  I wasn't pulled into this one with the same intensity as I was with The Scorch Trials, but it does serve as a decent conclusion to Thomas' story.  As far as popular young adult series go, I would rank this slightly below The Hunger Games and Divergent, but above Percy Jackson. 

I initially wanted to read this series because my so many of my students loved it.  I'm glad that I can talk with them about it now, and I will definitely recommend it to students looking for an action-packed adventure.  I appreciate that this is a series my male students will enjoy - something that is tough to find for the middle school age group.  While the Maze Runner books lack the crossover appeal for adults that other young adult novels enjoy, it is still a fun ride for the kiddos.